Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/50

40 which the menhirs of the Khasias of India appear like exact copies. Similar dolmens are standing in Palestine, Ireland, and Hindostan. Megaliths can be found in Peru and among the aboriginal monuments of North America, in Spain and Denmark, in the Orcades and the islands of the Mediterranean, on the shores of the Black Sea and of the Baltic, at the foot of Mount Sinai, and in Iceland at the edge of the eternal glaciers. The dolmens raised upon the top of a tumulus in Algeria may be compared with those standing in the department of the Aveyron or with those in Kintyre, Scotland, and Röskilde in Scandinavia; the cromlech of Maytura, in Iceland, with that at Halskov, in Denmark; the circle at Peshawur, in Afghanistan, with the circle of Stennis, in one of the Orcades; the tombs of the Neilgherries with the chondets that are found in Africa; the cromlechs of Algeria with those of Aschenrade, on the Dwina; the triliths of Stonehenge with those of Tripoli, or those mentioned by Palgrave as in Arabia. Even a superficial study will disclose the relations that exist between the covered passages of Provence and the megaliths of Brittany, and between these and analogous constructions in Spain and Algeria. A common thought, and an identical funeral rite, are revealed.

M. Cartailhac, for many years editor of the "Materiaux pour servir à l'Histoire de l'Homme" ("Materials to be used for the History of Man"), has, in a recent book on "Prehistoric Ages in Spain and Portugal" ("Les Ages préhistoriques en Espagne et en Portugal"), described some remarkable monuments in the Iberian Peninsula, most of which have not been previously brought to the scientific attention of students in other countries. The megaliths of Portugal consist in a great part of dolmens, or antas, as they are called there. Three hundred and fifteen of them were known in 1754. Some of them have disappeared; but though Pereira de Costa could report upon only thirty-nine at a conference held in connection with the International Exposition in Paris in 1867, Gabriel Pereira, a short time afterward, enumerated one hundred and eighteen, and these were mostly situated in the province of Beira and near Evora and Elvas, in Alemtejo.

In every country the rocks are disintegrated by the effect of weather-changes into large blocks. The megalith-builders chose those blocks for their purpose which offered the fairest surface. The inclosure was hollowed out. The stones chosen for the walls of the burial-chamber were raised, planted in the soil, and covered with large flat stones; and then the interstices were filled up with pebbles. A low, narrow entrance-gallery was made by a similar method, and, after the funeral rites were performed, the crypt was covered with a tumulus—a protecting envelope which has in most cases been removed long ago under the impulse of curiosity or with the hope of finding hidden treasures. The few dolmens still buried are called mammoas or maminhas (mammæ), from their peculiar form.